Experts Who Miss the Obvious

A Sunday Providence Journalarticle by Kate Bramson is worth a quick look by way of raising the question of why experts seem to miss the obvious. A few quick hits, starting with this, from “labor economist” Paul Harrington:

“Older workers are going to retire at some point or other, and it’s going to be followed by a generation with less labor-force participation and less work experience” than earlier generations had, Harrington said. “To me, figuring out, ‘How do I get work experience for young people in urban areas?’ — that would be a top priority.”

This isn’t a difficult problem. Eliminate the minimum wage, lighten up mandatory benefits for employees (including both those imposed as regulations and those imposed as entitlement taxes), and end policies that attract low-skilled workers from other countries. Rather than non-living-wages for legal and illegal immigrants, you’d have additional spending money for lower-income households and young adults with work experience.

Then there’s this, from University of Rhode Island Economics Professor Leonard Lardaro:

“We’re much more about the here and now, and we never allocate enough resources for investment,” Lardaro said. “The result? Our physical infrastructure — roads and bridges — are among the worst in the country. The skills of our labor force are nowhere near what we need…. We have to be much more of a society that allocates toward investment, and we’re avoiding it.”

Various data points make this hypothesis suspect. We already spend a great deal on education, for example, which is ostensibly done as an investment. Meanwhile, younger “productive class” Rhode Islanders are leaving the state, which indicates a willingness to risk a little short-term discomfort for a long-term improvement. Even if we look at insiders, we see long-term thinking: The labor unions fight for things like longevity, and pensions are a central focus of their activism, while insiders put in some years of long hours and relatively low (or even no) pay on various boards and councils or in the legislature, with the expectation that they’ll be able to cash out with a cushy patronage job or benefit in some other way.

The people who set Rhode Island policy do plenty of long-term thinking. The problem is that we allow them to use government to serve their own interests. Fix the general mindset that such systemic corruption is acceptable, and the state’s seemingly intractable problems will begin to clear up. Unfortunately, the Raimondo-Mattiello Era is proving to represent a mad dash in the opposite direction, leaving us only the hope that the dash indicates a sense that we’re almost to the point of collapse.

As seems so usual, Jefferson foresaw this, writing immediately after our Revolutionary War “From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down
hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights.” : Notes on the State of Virginia

No wonder the “rebels” at Tienanmen Square were quoting Jefferson. I wonder if his thoughts are even expressible in Chinese.